Experience Cloud Sites: Permission Error When Uploading Images from Local Drive to the Rich Text Editor

Issue

Non-administrator users encounter a permission error when attempting to upload images from their local drive to Rich Text Editor components in Experience Cloud sites. The error message "You do not have permission to execute this operation" prevents the image upload from completing, while uploads from the Asset Library work correctly.

Symptoms

1. Error message appears: "You do not have permission to execute this operation" when uploading images from local drive

2. The same user can successfully add images from the Asset Library without errors

3. Administrator users can upload images from local drive without issues

4. The error occurs consistently across all templates and pages within the Experience Cloud site

Cause

When a file is uploaded to an Experience Cloud site's Rich Text Editor component, the platform automatically converts it to an Asset file to ensure accessibility by all external site users. This process, called "assetization," moves the file to the Asset Library and creates a sharing record with the site's network ID, indicating that the file can be accessed by site users.

These file shares are stored in the ContentDocumentLink entity, and during the creation of these shares, the platform validates whether the uploading user has the necessary permissions to share files with Experience Cloud site users. The validation process specifically checks for the "Share Files with People in Experience Cloud sites" permission and blocks the upload if this permission is not granted to the user.

The permission validation occurs in the platform's content sharing boundary validation logic, which determines that users without this specific permission lack the necessary access level to perform the file sharing operation required for Experience Cloud site uploads.